Extracts from the press conference by Danuta Hübner, on the results of the Eurobarometer of January 2008

At a press conference on 7 March 2008 in Brussels, Danuta Hübner, Member of the EC in charge of Regional Policy, unveiled the results of a Eurobarometer survey carried out in January in the 27 Member States, on how the Europeans perceive the action of the regional policy. It shows that Europeans are overall aware of the benefits of this policy - which accounts for more than one third of the EU budget -, in their city or in their region. They want it to be more ambitious in the future while tackling new challenges such as the fight against climate change, globalisation and demographic trends.

Only the original language version is authentic and it prevails in the event of its differing from the translated versions.
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10:41:15

Title

00:00:04

10:41:20

General view of the press conference

00:00:07

10:41:27

Danuta Hübner, Member of the EC in charge of Regional Policy, (in ENGLISH) saying that on the awareness of the EU regional policy, they found that in all 27 Member States about half of the respondents were aware that the EU supported their city or their region; they judged this level of awareness as a very positive result, compared to last years' surveys when awareness levels for European policies were lower; for instance, in the survey that they had a year ago, only 43% of respondents said that they knew about the oldest common European policy which is the common agricultural policy, only 33% were aware that the European social fund existed and 71% said in February 2008 that they were not aware of the Europe-wide emergency number 112

00:00:54

10:42:21

Cutaway

00:00:07

10:42:28

Danuta Hübner (in ENGLISH) saying that more good news for regional policy was that more than 70% of those being aware of regional policy are convinced that it has positive impact on the development of European economy and society

00:00:19

10:42:47

Cutaway

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10:42:52

Danuta Hübner (in ENGLISH) saying that the future priorities was another question that they checked with the citizens; there is no doubt about the future priorities: globalisation, climate change and demographic challenges; basically 84% want to see the issues being taken care of by the European regional policy; climate change is the issue that has been chosen by the majority as the top priority for future action by the regional policy and it was considered as the most important in countries like Slovenia, Finland, Spain or Sweden

00:01:00

10:43:52

Danuta Hübner (in ENGLISH) reacting to a think tank report that contests the efficiency of the European regional policy;
saying that they totally disagree with this report prepared by an economist; they would be very happy to have a discussion with this person; this is one of these comments that you hear from time to time which are visible proof of the lack of understanding and knowledge of the policies; so they should probably target not only the citizens asking them how they should adjust the policies to their needs, but they should also target some of the researchers across Europe that should probably have a better understanding and knowledge of the policy
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